Naval warfare: Encyclopedia II - Naval warfare - From wood to steel

Naval warfare - From wood to steel

Trafalgar ushered in the Pax Britannica of the 19th century, marked by general peace in the world's oceans, under the ensigns of the Royal Navy. But the period was one of intensive experimentation with new technology; steam power for ships appeared in the 1810s, improved metallurgy and machining technique produced larger and deadlier guns, and the development of explosive shells, capable of demolishing a wooden ship at a single blow, in turn required the addition of iron armour.

The famous battle of the CSS Virginia and USS Monitor in the American Civil War was the duel of ironclads that symbolized the changing times. The first fleet action between ironclad ships was fought in 1866 at the Battle of Lissa between the navies of Austria and Italy. Because the decisive moment of the battle occurred when the Austrian flagship the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max successfully sank the Italian flagship Re d'Italia by ramming, in subsequent decades every navy in the world largely focused on ramming as the main tactic.

As the century came to a close, the familiar modern battleship began to emerge; a steel-armored ship, entirely dependent on steam, and sporting a number of large shell guns mounted in turrets arranged along the centerline of the main deck. The ultimate design was reached in 1906 with the Dreadnought which entirely dispensed with smaller guns, her main guns being sufficient to sink any existing ship of the time.

The Russo-Japanese War and particularly the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 was the first test of the new concepts, resulting a stunning Japanese victory and the destruction of dozens of Russian ships.

With the advent of the steamship, it became possible to create massive gun platforms and to provide them with very serious armor protection. The Dreadnought battleships and their successors were the first heavy capital ships that combined technology and firepower into a mobile weapons platform. However, in the first half of the 20th century, naval strategists and planners failed to take into account the effect of airpower on the effectiveness and usability of large capital ships, such as battleships.

World War I pitted the old Royal Navy against the new navy of Imperial Germany, culminating in the 1916 Battle of Jutland. (The future was heralded when seaplane carrier HMS Campania missed the battle.)

Between wars, the first aircraft carrier, HMS Argus, appeared. Many nations agreed to the Washington Naval Treaty and scrapped many of their battleships and cruisers while still in the shipyards, but the growing tensions of the 1930s restarted the building programs, with even larger ships than before; Yamato, the largest battleship ever, displaced 72,000 tons, and mounted 18.1-inch guns.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "From wood to steel", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki